Il Trittico, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, September 2011

In performances of Puccini’s Il Trittico the first opera Il Tabarro often delivers the heaviest emotional punch, but not here. Suor Angelica knocked Tabarro right off the stage because of one person — Ermonela Jaho. She was … words fail me … sublime … ethereal. You have to beg, borrow or steal to get tickets for this show just to see her performance.

Suor Angelica with the other nuns, all photos ROH/Bill Cooper

She is so pure as she sings I desideri — desires are flowers of the living, and in death the Virgin Mother anticipates them all — yet after Anna Larsson as her aunt the princess arrives, cold and elegant in black, and carrying a lovely fox stole, Ms. Jaho starts to show real emotion, singing of her son, and asking for news of him. Her È morto? followed by her anguished cry, was as lyrical as it was powerful. In this production the abbess moves Angelica’s hand to sign the document, smiling obsequiously to the princess, contaminating the serene purity of the convent with her desire for the family’s money, and not a care in the world about Sister Angelica. When Ms Jaho has finished singing Senza mamma, with her cries of parlami, amore you know it’s the end for her. And when the end of the opera arrives what a huge triumph it is for Antonio Pappano in the orchestra pit and Ms Jaho on stage. A front drop comes down and Ms Jaho stands in a spotlight to thunderous applause.

Yet it was not just her — the rest of the cast was super, and Anna Larsson in particular was emotionally gripping as the princess. Even after an interval of 25 minutes one could not take another such drain on the emotions, and Gianni Schicchi was the perfect antidote.

Schicchi is the one in jeans and tee-shirt

This last opera of the evening was enormous fun, and the harmonically ostentatious pleading of the relatives produced delighted laughter from the audience. I loved the occasional disconnects in the music near the beginning, as if this were musical chairs, and Elena Zilio was an excellent Zita with Francesca Demuro superb as the young Rinuccio, so keen to marry the Lauretta of Ekaterina Siurina. As she sang O mio babbino caro to her father my only complaint is that this came over as a set piece aria, but Lucio Gallo as Schicchi gave a fine performance of a crafty peasant who can outwit the whole Donati family. Here was a man who could well use the mule, the mills, and give the house to his daughter as a wedding gift.

Il Tabarro — the set

Lucio Gallo was equally at home as Michele the barge owner in Il Tabarro, subdued and controlled yet still emotional. Richard Jones’s new production, with its set designs by Ultz was excellent, and I liked the way D.M. Wood’s lighting died down at the front of the stage towards the end. Alan Oke was superb as Tinca, and Anna Devin and Robert Anthony Gardiner were very good as the lovers. Aleksandrs Antonenko sang a hunky Luigi, but Eva-Maria Westbroek as Michele’s wife Giorgetta did not grip me. I’ve seen her give wonderful performances of Sieglinde, of Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, and even Minnie in Fanciulla, but after Irina Mishura’s Frugola has sung about her dream of a little house, and Giorgetta sweeps in with her own dream, È ben altro il mio sogno! Ms Westbroek lacked lyricism, and the duet with Luigi was disappointing. Pappano revved the orchestra up to glorious heights, but the singing didn’t rise to the same level.

Yet this Puccini trio of operas is a must-see for Antonio Pappano’s richly nuanced conducting, plus Richard Jones’s new production of Suor Angelica with Ermonela Jaho. I first saw her in January 2008 when she took over at short notice from Anna Netrebko in Traviata, and she was a knock-out. That’s a role she’ll repeat at Covent Garden in January 2012 — I shall be there!

Performances continue until September 27, with a starting time of 6:30 — for details click here.

Blood and Gifts, National Theatre, NT Lyttelton, September 2010

On September 9^th, 2001 Ahmed Shah Massoud (aka The Lion of Panjshir) was assassinated by two suicide bombers — Al Qaeda agents posing as journalists. Two days later more suicide bombers crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The rest is history, as they say . . . meaning history that we remember. What we don’t remember is what led up to these events in 2001, and more particularly what led up to the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan in 1989 to 1991, and the subsequent evacuation of American interest in the country. That’s what this new play by J T Rogers is about.

Lloyd Owen for the CIA and Adam James for MI6, photo by Richard Hubert Smith

The characters are fictitious, but true to history, and various historical figures, such as the Northern Alliance leader Massoud, and the viciously fundamentalist warlord Gulbudddin Hekmatyar, are mentioned in passing. I particularly liked Lloyd Owen as the young CIA agent James Warnock, who understood what was going on, and was able to some extent to influence the raising and spending of American funds. His British counterpart, MI6 agent Simon Craig, was flamboyantly portrayed by Adam James as a brilliant chap who had no money to spend, even on his own transportation, and fell rather too easily into an irascible mood, catalysed by alcohol. His criticisms of Mrs. Thatcher’s tight-fisted policy with money for MI6 were trenchant, and made a stark contrast to the well-lubricated CIA machine, where the issues were of policy rather than lack of interest by the powers at home. The CIA tried calling the shots and circumventing the ISI (Pakistan’s InterServices Intelligence) by supporting another warlord, rather than Hekmatyar, but in the end Craig was right about not trusting anyone, “All this — it’s chess, Jim. Never good to get attached to one particular piece”. We found that out the hard way following the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and we ought to realise it now with the ground prepared for a second Taliban takeover.

The CIA with the Mujahideen, photo by Richard Hubert Smith

Among the large cast, Demosthenes Chrysan was very good as the fictitious Abdullah Khan, an Afghan warlord who looked rather like the real life Ismail Khan, one-time governor of Herat. His son Saeed was well played by Philip Arditti, and Matthew Marsh played the KGB agent Dmitri Gromov as a very sympathetic character. The ISI head, Colonel (later Brigadier) Afridi was played as decisive and smug by Gerald Kyd, leading an organisation that was, and still is, trying to hold Pakistan together by promoting Islamists to fight battles around their borders, but it’s a doomed strategy, just as was the American strategy of supporting Islamist extremists against the Soviet Union. You feed a monster to fight your perceived enemies, but when they are defeated the monster turns on you to feed its increased appetite.

Good direction by Howard Davies, clear simple designs by Ultz, and atmospheric music by Marc Teitler. If you don’t really know the chain of events, this play is a good history lesson, and if you do remember all this stuff, it’s well worth seeing if only to feel yourself trapped within the frustrations of the secret agents. They try to avoid being pawns of the ISI, as well as battling the personal frustrations of being barely in contact with their pregnant wives, yet unable to share the pain that their postings put them in. The play ends as 1991 turns into 1992 and the Americans leave for home — I await the sequel.

Performances continue until November 2.